The reason why I am creating this topic is because I heard yesterday that the Iranian “government” was accusing the protesters in the streets of committing “blasphemy”. So what they are saying is “If you are against me, you are against religion, you are against God, I am the representative of God in this world (?.!.?) and if you believe in God, you have to believe in me” (That’s the message political islamist are conveying all the time, all over the world.) So this needs some clarification. And I am going to make some basic definitions:
Religion
The world comes from Latin “religare”. It mean the sum of actions that are aiming to re-establish a connection between the individual and what the individual perceives as the “divine”. It is not even a social matter. It is and can only be a personal matter (between the individual and what he/she perceives as the “divine”) simply because what we call spiritual path or spiritual progress is an individual phenomenon. Just like only I can decide to take guitar lessons in order to be able to play the guitar. No one else can do it for me. So it’s a phenomenon that is 100% an individual phenomenon.
I know that some religion have some sort of religious hierarchy or clergy in them (for istance İslam doesn’t.) Yet if there is a clergy, this clergy’s place can only be the church, the monastery or the temple. And only adults beyond the age of 18 can be allowed to join them. And adult person should have the right to follow his/her spiritual aspirations but the indoctrination of young children by a form of clergy is something that I don’t agree with.
Ideology
The moment the clergy exits it’s temple / church and enters the realm of politics, this phenomenon ceases to be religion and it becomes an ideology. The best way to support this view would be to make a comparison between communisms (Leninist, of Maoist communism) and political Islam. Communism promises an earthly paradise of freedom and equality to all its followers. It is an utopic visions that aims to transcend all of the earthly concerns we are facing today. It truly claims to have the ability to make it all go away and create a perfect, earthly Utopia of socialism.
Political Islam does exactly the same thing. But political Islam also uses methods of social pressure, brainwashing and propaganda that were borrowed from national-socialism to a greater extend than Communism. And political Islam promises an earthly paradise like communism. A world of equality, justice and well-being for all. + it promises an earthly paradise to it’s followers beyond the physical death of the person. And it taps into most basic emotional aspirations of its followers and manipulates them through their lizard brain (like fascism and communism). And this ideology is not directly based on books like “Mein Kampf” or “The Capital”, it is based on the doctrines of “wise” Islamic schollars who are claiming to understand religion better than anyone else. In other worlds: ordinary believers are fools. Only “the true interpretation of religion” is correct, and everyone else must die. That’s their political ideology.
Terrorism
Terrorists are political islamists who have been indoctrinated, brainwashed (sometimes within a matter of week with new methods of hypnosis and the consumption of some substances that allow their brainwasher to entirely re-wire their brains) and have become fanatical to the point of losing the last remnants of their very humanity. I am still against torture and death penalty for these individuals because there is always the possibility that the man you are putting in Guantanamo could be an ordinary man if you are badly informed. And also, I don’t know if torture can produce reliable results anyway.
Just like socialist / communist terrorism actions of the 70’s or the 80’s, these people have gone beyond the realm of simply adhering to a given ideology. They are in a realm in which they can kill and be killed for their cause or their ideology. So it is needless to say that they also have nothing to do with ordinary believers.
Note:
I never said that ordinary believers were innocent of everything. In fact I believe that many ordinary believers, in many religions are threating their religion as a kind of fan-club with the aim of supporting their favorite soccer club. What I want to see is wherever there is a religious conflict, a polarization of religion (like what Modi is doing in India), an act of terror “in the name of God”, an ethnic cleansing in the name of religion (like in Myammar). The believers (of any religion) should raise their voices if they truly have a spiritual attachment to their religious teachings.
That’s how I see it.
Religion
The world comes from Latin “religare”. It mean the sum of actions that are aiming to re-establish a connection between the individual and what the individual perceives as the “divine”. It is not even a social matter. It is and can only be a personal matter (between the individual and what he/she perceives as the “divine”) simply because what we call spiritual path or spiritual progress is an individual phenomenon. Just like only I can decide to take guitar lessons in order to be able to play the guitar. No one else can do it for me. So it’s a phenomenon that is 100% an individual phenomenon.
I know that some religion have some sort of religious hierarchy or clergy in them (for istance İslam doesn’t.) Yet if there is a clergy, this clergy’s place can only be the church, the monastery or the temple. And only adults beyond the age of 18 can be allowed to join them. And adult person should have the right to follow his/her spiritual aspirations but the indoctrination of young children by a form of clergy is something that I don’t agree with.
Ideology
The moment the clergy exits it’s temple / church and enters the realm of politics, this phenomenon ceases to be religion and it becomes an ideology. The best way to support this view would be to make a comparison between communisms (Leninist, of Maoist communism) and political Islam. Communism promises an earthly paradise of freedom and equality to all its followers. It is an utopic visions that aims to transcend all of the earthly concerns we are facing today. It truly claims to have the ability to make it all go away and create a perfect, earthly Utopia of socialism.
Political Islam does exactly the same thing. But political Islam also uses methods of social pressure, brainwashing and propaganda that were borrowed from national-socialism to a greater extend than Communism. And political Islam promises an earthly paradise like communism. A world of equality, justice and well-being for all. + it promises an earthly paradise to it’s followers beyond the physical death of the person. And it taps into most basic emotional aspirations of its followers and manipulates them through their lizard brain (like fascism and communism). And this ideology is not directly based on books like “Mein Kampf” or “The Capital”, it is based on the doctrines of “wise” Islamic schollars who are claiming to understand religion better than anyone else. In other worlds: ordinary believers are fools. Only “the true interpretation of religion” is correct, and everyone else must die. That’s their political ideology.
Terrorism
Terrorists are political islamists who have been indoctrinated, brainwashed (sometimes within a matter of week with new methods of hypnosis and the consumption of some substances that allow their brainwasher to entirely re-wire their brains) and have become fanatical to the point of losing the last remnants of their very humanity. I am still against torture and death penalty for these individuals because there is always the possibility that the man you are putting in Guantanamo could be an ordinary man if you are badly informed. And also, I don’t know if torture can produce reliable results anyway.
Just like socialist / communist terrorism actions of the 70’s or the 80’s, these people have gone beyond the realm of simply adhering to a given ideology. They are in a realm in which they can kill and be killed for their cause or their ideology. So it is needless to say that they also have nothing to do with ordinary believers.
Note:
I never said that ordinary believers were innocent of everything. In fact I believe that many ordinary believers, in many religions are threating their religion as a kind of fan-club with the aim of supporting their favorite soccer club. What I want to see is wherever there is a religious conflict, a polarization of religion (like what Modi is doing in India), an act of terror “in the name of God”, an ethnic cleansing in the name of religion (like in Myammar). The believers (of any religion) should raise their voices if they truly have a spiritual attachment to their religious teachings.
That’s how I see it.
